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Slow Light = Fast Computing

Posted by Zonk on from the yay-light-beams dept.

yohaas writes "The Washington Post is reporting that scientists have been able to slow the speed of light while still maintaining its ability to transmit information. The researchers have even developed a way to 'tune' the process, modulating how fast or slow the light goes within controlled circumstances. From the article: 'Scientists said yesterday that they had achieved a long-sought goal of slowing waves of light to a relatively leisurely pace and using those harnessed pulses to store an image. Physicists said the new approach to taming light could hasten the arrival of a futuristic era in which computers and other devices will process information on optical beams instead of with electricity, which for all its spark is still cumbersome compared with light.'"

11 of 134 comments (clear)

  1. Ahem. by Hawthorne01 · · Score: 5, Funny

    We don't say "slow light" anymore. We say "Luminescentally Challenged".

    --
    "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
    1. Re:Ahem. by Quaoar · · Score: 5, Funny

      How retarded.

      --
      I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!
  2. Future performance whores will brag... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...in terms of how small their underclock of c is.

  3. Meanwhile, scientists at.. by LM741N · · Score: 5, Funny

    UC Santa Cruz have achieved a 1/1000 slowdown of light by passing a beam through a cloud of marijuana smoke.

  4. One possible method for that... by tpjunkie · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Is that the stencil is actually a fourier transform hologram, printed out on film. This would look like a pattern of seemingly random dots, but a focused beam of light would resolve the hologram image, even if sent photon by photon over time on a detector.

  5. The future is now! (tm) by Itninja · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Physicists said the new approach to taming light could hasten the arrival of a futuristic era
    I hate statements like this. How does a 'futuristic era' arrive? Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it impossible to hasten the arrival of the future? And when the future does indeed arrive, will it not then be simply 'the present'?
    --
    I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
    1. Re:The future is now! (tm) by Atzanteol · · Score: 5, Funny

      And when the future does indeed arrive, will it not then be simply 'the present'?

      Dark Helmet: What the hell am I looking at?!
      Colonel Sandurz: Now. You're looking at now, sir. Everything that is happening now is happening now.
      DH: What happened to then?
      CS: We passed it.
      DH: When?
      CS: Just now. We're at now now.
      DH: Go back to then!
      CS: When?
      DH: Now!
      CS: Now?
      DH: Now!
      CS: We can't!
      DH: Why?
      CS: We missed it.
      DH: When?
      CS: Just now.
      DH: When will then be now?
      CS: Soon.

      --
      "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"

      - Charles Darwin
  6. Moo by Chacham · · Score: 4, Interesting
    FTA:

    Howell and his colleagues created a four-inch-long chamber filled with cesium gas heated to about 212 degrees Fahrenheit. When they sent pulses of laser light through that gas, the cesium atoms put the brakes on the leading edge of that wave, creating a photonic traffic jam.
    So Cesium slows things down....

    Yet, this artcle which was reported on Slashot here, says

    In the most striking of the new experiments a pulse of light that enters a transparent chamber filled with specially prepared cesium gas is pushed to speeds of 300 times the normal speed of light. That is so fast that, under these peculiar circumstances, the main part of the pulse exits the far side of the chamber even before it enters at the near side.
    I'm a bit confused. Does Cesium speed thing up or slow things down?
    --
    Have you read my journal today?
    1. Re:Moo by exp(pi*sqrt(163)) · · Score: 4, Informative
      The latter article is about phase velocity. Phase velocity is the speed at which the individual peaks and valleys of the signal appear to travel. But peaks and valleys aren't actual 'things' and you can't transmit information using them. (See here.) This latest story is about the rate at which you can transmit information, so it's about group velocity.

      Despite the fact that the theory was worked out more well over a century ago, almost every modern pop science story about manipulating the speed of light leaves out these crucial points.

      --
      Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
  7. Re:*cough*bullsheet*cough* by julesh · · Score: 4, Informative

    There's no way a single photon makes a stencil image.

    There's a well-known effect that when you perform Young's double-slit experiment with single photons, the interference patterns still remain. If a single photon can interfere with itself, I'm sure it can make an image.

  8. Call me when they slow down darkness. by bad_fx · · Score: 4, Funny

    "No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it."